Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney
Summary Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney is a video game for the Nintendo DS. This game contains unofficial elements when it comes to the captilaists' view of the legal system. Story An upstart defense lawyer named Phoenix Wright is given the job to defend his childhood friend Larry Butz in a case that's revovled around the brutal murder of Larry's girlfriend Cindy Stone. With his mentor Mia Fey (no relation to 30 Rock star Tina Fey) Phoenix is determined to prove his friend and client not guilty. Gameplay As playing Phoenix Wright, you must explore many locales and talk to many people and find suspicious things to do anything to surprise your rival prosecution lawyer and prove your client not guilty. During a trial, you must listen to the witness's testmony and press the witness on certain statements on his/her testimony and present evidence at right times as well as answering the judge's and the prosecutor's questions correctly. Failiure to do so will penalize you, too many will mean a guilty verdict (or game over). There are 5 episodes in this game, which each one has their own unique case. Johnny's reviews General Thoughts This game didn't spark my interest at first. Until I started to watch videos of the Phoenix Wright parody "Phoenix Wrong". For those who don't know what Phoenix Wrong is, it's a parody where the backgrounds and the sprites from the existing 4 games (or 5 if you count the Miles Edgeworth spin-off) and bits from either movies, TV shows or songs from various musicians and (in a comedic fashion) use the sprites to the series of sound bits. So, I had to play this game to see for myself. Graphics The grpahics in this game are anime style. Though, I myself am not a fan of anime by any means (except for Megaman NT Warrior ''and ''Street Fighter 2 V) but the anime style graphics (unlike most of the'' PokeMon'' titles) are very colorful and well detailed and almost follow the production arts frame by frame. Rating: 8.5 Music The music in this game fits every sense of the atmosphere of the game very well. Though the drawback is that the soundtrack is a bit limited, but good. Rating: 7.5 Sound/Voice The sounds are also very good. The drawback to the sounds is that some of the sounds (and only some) are recycled from other Capcom games (E.G. Street Fighter 2, Megaman X). The voice in the game is also a bit limited, but good (this is because of the limited size of the game's memory). Rating: 8 Gameplay The gameplay may not be super dynamic like in most of the games I've played, but it does fit to the puzzle solving genre nicely. There's a lot of menu selecting which can become annoying after a while (especially when you're looking for evidence and having to move from place to place). But this type of gameplay has the biggest strength of the time in the courtroom. Rating: 6.5 Replay Value The replay value is really what lets this game down. There is no other game modes to play or extra features to unlock. But because there's so much to do and once you beat the game and leave it for a while, chances are that you'll forget what to do once you start playing it again. Then again, if you play this game so many times and remember what to do, it becomes easy. Rating: 4 Final Thoughts Other than the severe lack of extra features and game modes, there's also other drawbacks to this game. The witnesses (at times) cry out or burst in anger when you do what you're supposed to do. Personally, I've never set foot inside a courtroom before, but I know for sure that if you ever do anything like the witnesses (or anybody else in the courtroom for that matter) you'll be taken out of the courtroom and into jail. But since "character behavior" isn't a catagory I normally talk about, I'll just leave that it's at least an enjoyable game and it *is* worth a shot. Overall Rating: 7